Next Door
by Mary West
Summary: Severus Snape is in that space between finishing school and starting life as an adult. He doesn't know where to go, so he's gone home for the first time in 7 years.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

It had been a long time – a very long time – since he had lived at home. The terrace house was musty; dust lay on the furniture like a layered veil, slowly obliterating the faded patterns and mercifully hiding the holes where the mice had made merry. Grime on the windows obscured all but the strongest rays of the sun, which were rarely seen in this grubby little town anyway. Severus Snape, formerly of Hogwarts and now in that limbo between the end of his education and the beginning of the rest of his life, put down his school trunk and muttered a curse at the lack of house elves and the complications inherent in living in a Muggle location.

A small cloud of mould and soot rose behind him as he strode through the house, flinging open doors to discover further signs of neglect. The dampness from the river at the end of the lane had seeped through the floorboards and started eating at the carpet, and black beetles scurried into shelter when he incautiously lifted a curtain to peer through the window. Another moment and Snape discovered exactly _how_ comfortable the beetles had made themselves, as the fabric of the curtain shattered in his hands and fluttered to the ground like so many dead moths.

He was starting to wonder exactly what he had intended to achieve by coming home after all this time when there was a knock at the front door. The house was not large, and within a few seconds he reached the door, managing to avoid barking his shins on the trunk he had left in the front room that came straight in off the street. He opened the door cautiously, and donned his most supercilious attitude to face the stranger knocking.

"Yes?" The coldness of the single word would have frozen a less determined person, but the little shape at the bottom of the soot-stained steps was not daunted. Snape peered down , and a pair of bright eyes look up at him with a friendliness he had not encountered since Lucius Malfoy had left at the end of his first year.

"Good morning! Oh my." The voice was slightly croaky, and came from what might have been a pepperpot except that it was actually a rather short woman, rounder than she was high and swathed in a coat of indeterminate hue and a scarf of very determined carmine. "You've grown."

"I. Beg. Your. Pardon?"

Snape's voice could hardly have been less welcoming, but the visitor did not seem put off by its rudeness. She bustled up the stairs and stood on tip-toe to peer closely at the youth, peering through a bottle-lensed pair of glasses in a way that suggested that they were not as effective as they were thick.

"You were such a scrawny lad – nor as far through as a kipper, and now look at you. Wherever it was they sent you, at least they fed you well."

Snape's patience was running extremely thin, and the thought of having to cope with this old biddy was becoming intolerable. "I don't believe I know you, madam. Now if you'll excuse me I have a house to rescue." He turned, but her hand shot out and grabbed at his arm, preventing the door from closing.

"No, of course you wouldn't remember me. You'd gone to school by the time I met your mum. Lovely, she was, poor lass. And always talking about you. Couldn't say enough about how well you were doing, and how you must have been brighter than all the rest. But silly me! I haven't introduced myself. Mrs Pennyman, your next door neighbour." Somehow, before he could stop her, she'd bustled past him and into the front room.

"Oh it would break your mother's heart to see the state this is in now. As if it wasn't already broken ... but I'll not speak ill of the dead. She had a hard time of it, but once she had the place to herself, she kept it neat and clean! Not a speck of dust, though the furniture had seen better days. Well!" Mrs Pennyman turned to face him, her hands on her hips. "It's not fit for a body to live in, and that's the truth. You look tired beyond belief, and I don't believe this house has seen a duster or a broom for the last four years, so we'll have a nice hot cup of tea and then we'll get this place livable again!"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

The previous night had involved the long train ride from Hogwarts to Kings Cross, followed by an unpleasant overnight coach trip back North, (there being no Floo network locations that Snape felt comfortable using until he knew his hometown a little better). Years of term breaks spent studying at Hogwarts, and holidays cadged at various fellow students' houses meant he hadn't remembered how long it would take to get back to his house by Muggle means. Snape felt an unaccustomed wave of exhaustion sweep through him, and he stumbled slightly before feeling his arm grasped in a surprisingly strong grip, and his whole body propelled through his front door and along the street to a seemingly-identical house next door.

"Use the mat!"

He knew how tired he really was when he automatically wiped his feet before walking in onto a brightly-coloured rug in a front room that was as devoid of dust as his own had been full of it. The walls were clean and bright, and while the pictures did not move, their cheerful faces lifted the mood of the house even further. Snape docilely followed Mrs Pennyman through to the kitchen, and allowed himself to be sat in a chipped but sturdy wooden chair. The kettle behind him was singing quietly, and the clinking noises soothed his frustrated brain.

His mind slipped into vague memories of the final NEWTS exam, his last interview with Professor Dumbledore, and his discussions with the various ministry officials about possible future roles. Like a squirrel on a wheel his mind once more slipped back to a day some four years before, when he had been summoned to Dumbledore's office by Horace Slughorn. The sky had been clear and sunny for some reason. He could remember coming out of the office and heading outside, needing to get a bit of space to absorb the news. It didn't make sense. How could it have been sunny when his mother had just died? He had walked down to the lake and sat there, alone, staring into the water like he was staring into the table top now...

"Wake up, sleepy. Get this hot tea into you, and you'll feel a lot better." The hand on his shoulder and the steam from the tea were refreshingly real, and he wrapped his hand around the cup as if to extract all the heat from it at once. A plate of biscuits and ham sandwiches arrived as well, and he had finished one and started on a second before he remembered his manners and thanked his host.

"Oh, I could see you were hungry. Better you get yourself warm and fed, and you'll cope with the day. Are you planning on staying long in the house?" Mrs Pennyman sat at the end of the table facing him, helping herself to a biscuit.

"I... I hadn't thought." He sipped the tea once more. "There was no point my coming back before, and I didn't realise how dilapidated the place had become. It's going to take a lot of work to make it habitable."

"Aye, and tin. Not much, if you're careful, but a bit. I don't mean to pry, but how are you going to support yourself?"

Snape smiled, thinking of the small pile sitting in Gringott's, and the smaller stash beneath his clothes in the chest. "I have managed to earn a little over the past two years. Tutoring other students. Holiday jobs for the Ministry, or helping around the school. And while my parents didn't leave me much, it will be sufficient to return the house to a livable condition and to live on until I find myself a proper position."

"And what would that be?" Mrs Pennyman enquired, curious about this dark-haired not-quite-stranger that was now her neighbour. "Would you be staying in the town, or going down to London?"

"I really can't think of that now, Mrs Pennyman. Forgive me, but I haven't slept at all well on the coach. Perhaps you could … I never... "

He paused, staring down into his tea as if to divine from the hot milky substance the answers he was seeking.

"Could you tell me about my mother?"


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

It was still morning, and outside the birds chirped on the smut-laden trees and hunted for worms in the sparse soil around the flowerbeds. A slight breeze eased through the window and touched the curtains, sending wavering hints of shadow around the kitchen. Mrs Pennyman absentmindedly picked up a biscuit then put it back down again.

"Well, of course, I never met your father. He'd been gone a week when we moved in here, and her still in the hospital."

Snape turned his head so fast it was surprising his neck didn't break. "Hospital? I never heard that! Did he? How?"

"Oh, it was him all right. Filthy brute had come home one night, swilliking like old Harry, she tried to stop him doing something and he'd beaten her to within an inch of her life. He must have taken off then, but the old lass who was here and sold the place to me had heard your mother screaming, and sent her youngest off for the police. Had to break down the door, they did, and found her mollycrushed on floor, all muggled up."

Snape started at this, and stared at her, but she thought he was reacting to the state of his mother, and continued. "So they said, and she were a sennight in the hospital. Came home the day we moved in, so I sent my Jenny over to help her in and look after her the first week or so. I told her, I did, that if that … " The motherly woman's voice had started to rise, but then she collected herself and continued. "If your father turned up again she could stay here, but he niver showed. I'm thinking he came to a bad end, for by Christmas she was telling me she was free of the old fellow for ever. And such a happy lass she was, Miss Eileen, making such plans for the two of you. She would show me those funny pictures of you, the ones with that moving trick, and tell me all about how you were doing so well, and making lots of friends. And that at the end of the school year she'd be having you back for a _proper_ holiday, one with trips to the picture theatre and picnics and all." Mrs Pennyman stopped, and put down her cup of tea. Snape waited for her to continue, but she just sat for a minute, staring into the tea herself. Then, with a great sigh, she reached into a pocket and pulled out a plain but serviceable handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.

"I can remember her, sitting at this very table, right where you are now. She was smiling and happy, and she broke my second-best teacup waving it around in excitement. Fair got me riled up it did." She paused again, then leaned towards Snape.

"'Course, I knew about her magic."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four.

It took a moment for this to sink in.

"You … you _knew_?" Snape stared at the old woman, more surprised than if he had seen Professor McGonnagal kissing Filch.

"Oh, it wasn't like she was blathering it all over, Severus, but I'd been helping in her house. I'd seen the Potions Books and that funny newspaper with more of them pictures. She fixed that teacup. And she told me." Mrs Pennyman took another sip of tea. "She told me about your school, and what you'd learned there, and how she'd been worried you might turn out one of them non-magical types, like a handicap. And when she was talking about the brooms and the Caddich..."

"Quiddich"

"Aye, that. The Quaddich, she made my poor teaspoons fly around the kitchen. And she was saying how she'd love to go back and study more, and that she'd been a potions wizard, and we'd giggle about that, 'cause she was a _witch_ who was a _wizard_ at potions." They both groaned at the paucity of the pun, and Mrs Pennyman took Snape's hand and looked into his eyes. "It fair made her come alive, it did, talking such things. And she swore she was going to get her hand back in."

He gazed into her eyes, trying hard to read the ending of the story from her look. The tears sliding down her wizened cheeks sent a cold shiver through his soul, and he looked away first. His voice choked, and it took a minute before he could frame the words in an understandable manner.

"She was experimenting, wasn't she?"

He felt, rather than saw, the nod.

"How..."

A pause. The rustle of the handkerchief. A nose blown like the trumpet of an avenging angel, four years too late.

"She didn't come for her tea in the morning like she normally did. And we kept each other's spare keys under our back steps, so I let myself in and there was smoke everywhere and green stains on the ceiling, and her lying on the lino, curled up like she was asleep. And then these men in robes showed up through her fireplace, so I scarpered! But I knew she was gone. I'd seen that look before. Then a man turns up here, as fawce as a ferret, fair manking about, saying she'd left the gas on and had I seen owt? And did I know where you was like I'd been tooting through the net the whole time! And they took her away and that were it! No funeral, just the place locked up until today."

They sat, quietly, both contemplating the empty teacups in front of them to hide the tears that threatened. He spoke first, calculating. "Did you tell anyone else about the magic?"

"Oh no! My Jenny only saw her first day we were here, and thinks she died natural-like. She's been off in London these three years past. Do ye think I'm daft? They'd be putting me in the loony bin!" She turned and looked him in the eyes again, and his gaze held her like a snake hypnotises its prey. His voice dropped to a low and husky whisper, and he slid his wand out from inside his jacket.

"No-one has come for the house next door. It is still unused, and always will be. And Elaine Prince was just a battered, broken, sad woman.."

"… sad woman ..."

"She died from a gas leak"

"…. gas leak … "

"And her son hasn't been heard of since."

A wave of the wand, and the tea-cups were washed and returned to their normal cupboard. When he left, he would push in the chair and there would be no trace that he had ever been there. A shame, really – he could have done with the odd cup of tea. Someone to give him a hand with the house. Someone to talk to. Someone to talk to about his mother.

He hesitated, and his voice cracked a little over the last section."

"She was nothing special."

"… nothing special …"

"_Obliviate_"


End file.
